Monthly Archives: July 2011

28

Jul. ’11

These Boots Were Made For Conquering

For the past week, every morning when I walk Betty, I see my neighbour, Chuck, raking up mountains of dead leaves on his front lawn.  It’s July for Godsake!  “I don’t what’s happening, the tree isn’t dead but it keeps dropping leaves and making new ones.  Pain in the ass,” he says.  It’s a perpetual autumn tree and when I walk b y his house, I keep thinking it’s fall.  Sometimes I am confused in the morning.  I despise the idea of change, a Pavlovian reaction to having to go back to school in September after having the best summers in the world.  But when it does come and it will again, and I am in it, I am my best self.  I am my best self because a little nip in the air causes me to study my wardrobe and get excited about accessorizing.  It may be a frivoulous diversion to some but I believe when you look good, you feel good.  And when you feel good, the world is your scratching post.

But the last few years, my mojo has been compromised.   As y’all know, I have made many attempts to jump-start it.  I have belly-danced, hula-hooped, vibrated every orifice, and even taken a naked spin class, and blah, nothing really got me going.   One summer, 5 years ago, when I broke my toes on my right foot, I wore pink Crocs, all through September and in October, I switched to Uggs. That, most likely, was the year I disappeared. I lost my power.  The mojo that I had honed and was my glory had turned into my demise.  It was my Achilles heel!  Comfortable shoes from now on!

The other day, Evangeline and I were doing the Queen Street East strip in search of old style non-pocket photo albums for her current obsession with Lomography (future post).  She has my shopping gene, where when you want something bad, you hunt it down and comb every possible store, until you get it.  In my day, there was no eBay or Amazon, and once I made my parents take me all the way to Vermont to find a book which we did and then had Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the flagship store.  The best part of the hunt are the little retail diversion discoveries along the way:  Did you know the old linen store beside Bark & Fitz is now a store for that sells custom corsets and tulle petticoats?   I know this is what every husband of a stroller-pushing, dogwalking beach mom wants his wife to be wearing.  Or his mistress, what am I talking about?

Our retail diversion was the very cool store, Yoka, 2116 Queen Street East.  There’s always stuff to want in there and the staff is so cool and friendly.  But because of my dormant mojo and budget restraints, I have not been there in a while.  But there was a nip in the air.  And all the chokras were buzzing.  I zoomed passed the racks of possiblities and my eyes hit the shoe display.  And there was the boot.  Without even thinking or hestitating, I grabbed it and whoa, it was heavy. I am sure  they cleverly filled the display boot with marbles so you wouldn’t think of licking it like a fudgsicle.  Of course that was my instinct.  I’ve got love, lust, and hunger all mixed up, see previous post.  The boots also look like swirls of chocolate and caramel in the shape of Superwoman.  They are made by Tsubo, a running shoe manufacturer, and the salesgirl said as if she needed sell them, “They’re really comfortable.”  Blah, blah, comfort shmomfort, there is no way I’m leaving this store without a pair.  And for me, with my pampered Birkenstock-wearing monkey toes, to say that meant that this was love.  Or lust.  Or hunger.

And they had my size, certainly another reason to celebrate this store.  The owner is Dutch and Zero is a chocolate bar, not a size.  I warned the salesgirl, “These most likely will not fit over my Herculean calves.”

“They will,” she said, “There’s a cobbler on the Danforth who can fix anything!”

Oh great, all I need is a cobbler crush.  I’ve got a bathroom that needs to be gutted.  Note to self:  Buy boots, wear short skirt, and hang out at Rona.

Anyway, the boots went on, and with manoevring, zipped all the way up.  I have been wearing them for two days straight.  Lunging, squatting, vacuuming, walking the dog.  It’s not fall yet, but this broad has it going on.  And until autumn comes, I will leave your with this:

Posted by . Categories: go girl. Tags: , , . 1 Comment

23

Jul. ’11

I Love You, Caplansky

And now I’m going to share with you a personal too-much-information tidbit:  A few years ago, when I was going through a Hard Time, I went for some professional therapy.  I was mooning over some dude and the therapist, a man by the way,  listened to me for an hour lament/whine/wail on about how broken hearted I was and how this lost love was the most tragic thing EVER.  He was having a nicotine fit the whole time, crossing and uncrossing he skinny little legs, chewing on his gnarly fingernails with his yellow and brown horse teeth.  At the time, I remember thinking:  Why aren’t you saying anything?  Why don’t you help, for Godsake?  And finally, when he did speak at the end, he said to me:  “Well you obviously don’t know the difference between love and lust.”  What an idiotic, dismissive thing to say after I opened up all my emotional baggage.  I never went back to him.  It turned out that non-professional therapy, ie. drinking gallons of wine while watching Dr. Phil, was good enough for me.  Gradually the mooning stopped, time is a great healer.  However, I still run into the heartbreaker often enough and when I see him, I get a pang.  And I get a little wave of nostalgia, and I think:  Man, I really miss those dry rubbed baby back ribs you used to make on the bbq, I could suck on those all day!

Maybe the crackpot therapist was partially right, I mix love up with hunger.  It explains a lot:  My butcher crush, the way I always hang out with the oyster shucker at parties, and my latest obsession:  The Caplansky Deli Truck.  Last night I went to the Beaches Jazz Festival, which is always a lot of fun but I go more for the street meat than the actual music.  I knew through the Twitter feed Caplansky was going to park his truck at the foot of Elmer so I made a bee-line through the freak show that is local beachers in Birkenstocks and sarongs swaying and gyrating to the honk and tweet that is jazz.  The truck was there, Zane Caplansky himself was there (read about him here), and I was there.  The universe converged us together.  Now I had already eaten dinner, believe it or not: A SALAD, but there was still room for more of course.  My eyes scanned the menu and fell upon:  Maple Bacon Donuts.  Oh. My. God.  I ordered 6 and don’t get in my grill.  They are little balls, kind of like beignets from New Orleans, coated in maple infused with bacon.  I realize this is kind of girlie food, a sweet and salty PMS remedy but I was ovulating when I had it.  It was sublime.  This morning I woke up thinking about it.  And tonight I will go back.  Until then, I will leave you with this classic maple bacon lover:

Posted by . Categories: Eat & Drink, go girl, This Charming Man. Leave a comment

17

Jul. ’11

Home Sweet Home

The men came last Monday and tore out all the pee-soaked carpets.  They were not happy campers.  They were Italian immigrants, used to the bungalow lifestyle in Woodbridge so having to walk up and down 3 flights of stairs, inhaling urine fumes, manoeuvring hunks of carpet through the most narrowest of doorways, made them scowl all day.  If my halls were arteries, they would be forced to have an angioplasty.  “These houses were built stupidly,” one of the workers said in a thick accent, ‘Why Canada have so much land and they build the houses so close together?  Make-a no sense-a!”  I had the answer to that but I just agreed, “Stupid, yeah.”  My house was built in 1934, long before the growth hormones in the cattle gave us all height and high fructose corn syrup made us wide.  People were puny back then.  They also had two frocks and one coat.  It wasn’t until the estrogen-based bi-products from the plastic industry in the 1950s which turned everyone into a gay fashionista that the teeny tiny closets in these houses seemed absurd.   Olden-days people had few needs and they didn’t complain about stairs and such. The houses were close together to keep warm.  It’s fricking freezing in Canada, duh.   But the cranky men did finish the job in one day, and the slippery engineered wood floors are a lot better than stinky carpet.  Freddy is still at camp until the end of July and will positively plotz when he sees his floor, but then probably kvetch when he sees how I disassembled his gaming systems so now the wires are a tangled nest of snakes, who knows what goes into which hole?  Although I guess 15 year old boys have an innate knowledge of where plugs go.

And speaking of displaced, now that the dog has no where plush to piss in the house, she goes outside.  Guess what?  SHE HAD BLADDER CONTROL ALL THIS TIME!  At first she was afraid of the new floor, and hid under the bed, but now she paces on it at night:  click, click, clickity, click….click…click, tap and scratch with her claws on her frito-smelling feet.  There’s always something. Like a couple of nights ago there was banging in the kitchen.  If it’s the mice (yes, mice, old timey houses have lots of rodents, learn to love them), why is Betty not barking?  One of them died a couple of weeks ago with its ass and tail hanging out from under the fridge, impaled by a raw piece of spaghetti and Betty completely ignored it.  What good is a dog, who is smaller than most cats, if she can’t catch or deter mice from raiding my kitchen?  So I got up and turned on the light and could see the garbage lid going up and down all by itself.  Relax, there are no ghosts, it’s one of those motion sensor lids that probably got out of whack, like every other appliance in the house.  When I got up close, though, the lid and the entire garbage can was crawling with hundreds of MAGGOTS!   There is nothing worse than a triple shot of horror driven adrenaline in the wee morning hours.  I screamed and hollered and Evangeline and I bagged the entire bin up in plastic while we hopped around, trying not to step on any of the bugs.  I cannot handle maggots, epecially a zillion of them crawling wildly (note to self:  do not die at home alone).   This is not the first time I’ve hosted a maggot-palooza, so I’ve been careful but I think I put one of those juiced up paper wrappers from the butcher in the clean garbage instead of the sealed green bin.  My bad.  Super gross, and now the house is full of flies, the noisy, boisterous kind that buzz near the windows.   I give up.  Party on, creatures, just keep it to a dull roar.

Posted by . Categories: Hanging Around. 1 Comment

09

Jul. ’11

Searching For Mr. Tenant

If somebody in Toronto spots this man, tweet me pronto.  Not for me, perv, for my daughter.  I might be in my cougar years but I’m not on the prowl for young prey.  Please.  But daughter is a big fan of his work.  Although we would both love to get a real-life glimpse of the enigmatic (and by enigmatic, I mean: What’s the story, morning-glory? Is he gay or straight?) Robert Pattinson, the sparkly star of that heinous Twilight franchise.  He’s in town RIGHT NOW filming “Cosmopolis.”  He wasn’t at the Pride Parade on Sunday, but then again all those oily young bucks looked alike in blazing sun.  He doesn’t seem to sleep or eat anywhere, so he could possibly really be a vampire.   So yeah, if you spot a Cosmopolis film truck, call me, and we will put our slap on, change our shoes, and Scionate on over to the locale and pretend we are part of the makeup crew.  Hilarity would ensue, it would be like a hybrid episode of Gilmore Girls meets I Love Lucy. It would make our whole summer.

And speaking of slippery young men, last week my tenant gave me notice that he was leaving.  And by “notice,’ I mean a text on July 1;  “Just a head’s up, Kristin, I’m looking for a cheaper place.”  Me:  “You mean September 1?”  He: “Well, like, kind of like August 1, I’ll let you know.”  WHAT DO YOU MEAN “LET ME KNOW?”  You’re leaving or you’re not, and you’re only giving me 30 days notice, JESUS MO-FU!   I didn’t say that to him, instead I remained calm and told him I would have to advertise it right away, blah blah, but inside I was seething with the usual fear-based rage I have become so accustomed in the past year.  As much as I love my tenant, and by “love,”  I mean from afar, from very afar, because he spends most of his time in Woodbridge.  And for me, there is no better tenant than the absent kind.  But he was having problems with rent, so, maybe it was really for the best.

So onto to Craigslist I went.  It’s a scary place, that’s for sure.  Last year I put 8 harp-backed dining room chairs for sale.  Those are those ubiquitous chairs that every East York gramma has but I put the clever spin on it in the ad:  “As seen on Sex and the City.”  It is true, when you own these harp-backed chairs, you can spot them a mile away anywhere.  So I noticed in the episode where Charlotte wants to convert to Judaism and she barges in on the Rabbi’s Seder, she is offered a seat on a harp-back when they say their prayer.  Funnily enough, the person that answered the Craigslist ad, was a woman named Esther, who came to see them one evening with her husband.  They were a young Jewish couple from Bathurst and Lawrence and they drove all the way to the beach late at night   She was wearing a long black wig ass-length wig that made her look like pole dancer in a witness protection program.  She was  painfully thin and covered up in a button down shirt and one of those long, ankle length corduroy skirts that Ralph Lauren still puts out for that particular demographic.   He was all conservative, also,  wearing a yarmulke and suit and was non-stop finger fucking his Blackberry the moment he stepped out of the mini-van.  I took them to see the chairs which were in the empty dining room of the apartment that I hadn’t yet rented out to the current dingle-douche. It was way past my bed-time and one of those sweltering hot Tennessee Williams-style July nights that make sensitive souls such as myself want to ruminate in the dark with a wet washcloth and sweating glass of icy vodka-laced lemonade bed-side.  It took these two wretched characters the better part of an hour for them to fight over whether to buy the chairs or not.

He:  These chairs are UGLY!

She:  I like them, I want them.

He:  You just like them because you want to buy them.  You`ll hate them when you bring them home.  You do this all the time.

She:  No I don’t, I haven’t done any decorating in that apartment!   I really like them.

He: You don`t like them,  you just like buying things.

She:  They’ll fit perfectly with the table.

He:  WHY?  They are UGLY and they are too small!  We have fat relatives! (and he turns to me and says) I’m sorry, lady, but I know my wife and she just likes to buy things even if they are ugly.

Me:  But she likes them…..But you are right, she married you and you are ugly (haha, I don’t actually say that part)

He:  SHE DOESN”T LIKE THEM!  YOU’RE NOT HEARING ME!  I KNOW MY WIFE!

And so it went.  I shut up and just watched this post modern, twisted version of “Fiddler on the Roof” play out until she finally complied right around the time his Blackberry ran out of battery.  Off they went, chairless, into the sultry hot night.  When they got home, they probably had negotiated sex:  “I’ll buy you an ottoman,” he said,  After he planted his seed into her bony loins, he rolled over and said, “If you have a baby, it better be a boy,” as he plugged his Blackberry back in the charger.  Stupid Craigslist, creepy people, dumb chairs.  A week later, the good folks at Frontier Sales ended up taking them off my hands.  “These chairs are a dime a dozen,” Frontierman said, ” But I will give 50 bucks.”  Sweet!  Deal!

That was a year ago.  So when I reluctantly put the apartment up on Craigslist this week, I was delighted with 8 responses in one day, and 6 people came.  It turned out I had my choice!   Everyone was so nice!  There were ladies and couples but I ended up choosing the single, mid- 20s male, once again, to replace the old one.  The house is top-heavy with both fresh, ripe, and spayed estrogen (poor 15-year-old Freddy, even the dog is a girl)  that the virile testosterone of a young buck can be the only remedy to make the house feng shui balanced.  That is my story and I’m sticking to it.

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